


24 Caprices & a Bottle of Claret

by okapi



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Bees, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Cocaine, Deerstalker, Dressing gowns, Fluff, Index-Books, Inspired by Music, M/M, Medieval study, Music, Puns & Word Play, Turkish Bath, Violins, Wine, scientific experiments, tobacco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2018-12-16 00:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 17,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11817738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Holmes talks about Paganini. Watson talks about Holmes.Complete.1. The Whim of Violins2. The Fancy of Wine3. The Urge of Exhaustion4. The Notion of Chivalry5. The Bee of Bees6. The Freak of Diabolical Collusion7. The Perversity of Evil8. The Humours of Tobacco9. The Quirk of Dressing Gowns10. The Rib of Fowl11. The Impulse of Feigned Death12. The Fitfulness of Perfectionism & Self-reproach13. The Kink of the Turkish Bath14. The Sport of Boxing15. The Desire of Hands & Feet16. The Vein of Morphine17. The Temper of Cocaine18. The Peculiarity of Medieval Studies19. The Thought of Scientific Experimentation20. The Conceit of Index-books21. The Vagary of Untidiness22. The Mood of Philosophy23. The Vision of the Deerstalker24. The Caper of the Game Afoot25: Blitz Poem: Fancy a Caper?This led him to Paganini, and we sat for an hour over a bottle of claret while he told me anecdote after anecdote of that extraordinary man.–"The Cardboard Box"





	1. The Whim of Violins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My main source is [_Nicolo Paganini: his life and work_ ](https://archive.org/details/nicolopaganinih00stragoog)by Stephen S. Stratton (1907).
> 
> Here is [Op. 1 No. 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUKPPRN-Y00&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI) of the 24 _Caprices_.
> 
> In all fairness, I'm not certain where this is going, but I'm quite keen to do something on the _Caprices_ and I fear the shelf-life on the idea will expire if I don't start. So here goes.

“Paganini?” I echoed, pressing my lips together. “Oh, yes. Paganini. Capricious fellow, wasn’t he?”

The waiter smirked and left with our orders.

“Oh, Watson,” Holmes groaned. “Your redolent humour! I believe the potted shrimps at the next table have quite turned tail.”

“Too pungent by half, I am sure.”

Holmes’s amusement became tinged with a bit of alarm—and far worse, a dash of fatigue—so I gave my tone an ice bath. “Please continue. What about Paganini’s violin?”

“He acquired it on as easy terms as I acquired mine.”

A bottle of claret sat between us. As always with the bottled poetry, Holmes did the honours.

“I purchased my Stradivarius for fifty-five shilling from a broker in Old Tottenham Court Road,” he said as he filled my glass. “Then, it was worth at least five hundred guineas; of course, by now, it’s value has decreased due to the wear I’ve placed on it.”

“Or increased due to the notoriety of its owner.”

A half-smile tugged at a corner of his lips. He filled his own glass.

“In his youth, Paganini struggled with one of the vices of yours that I do not share, Watson.”

I frowned.

Holmes erupted in a spike of laughter, which, with the accompanying jostling, threated to upset glass and spirit. He recovered quickly and gracefully and, with crisis averted and task complete, narrowed the field.

“Gambling.”

“Ah,” I sighed as if remembering an old lover who’d had the kindness to take my wallet out of my trousers before vanishing with it. “ _That_ one.”

“He was to give a concert but had lost both money and violin. A French merchant named Monsieur Livron took pity and lent him a fine Guarnerius for the occasion. But after hearing Paganini play, Livron refused to accept the return of the instrument, saying he wouldn’t profane the strings that Paganini had touched. That violin became Paganini constant companion.”

I nodded.

Constant companion.

Holmes’s Stradivarius kept him company even when I could, or would, not. It was by his side, under his chin, perched on his knee, tangled in his long limbs, in his most philosophical, least sociable moods.

It woke me at the strangest hours. It put me to sleep at stranger ones.

In Holmes’s lethargic periods, it lay hidden and mostly silent in his embrace, while he himself lay, at times for days, motionless on the sofa, wrapped around it like a possessive, but insultingly distracted, paramour.

Careless scrapes, melancholy chords, cheerful trills.

It conducted his thoughts, in cryptic melody, even when he chose not to express them in words, especially when he chose not to express them in words.

It knew him better than I did.

I leaned forward and whispered, “If I were a jealous man…”

He leaned forward, too, his tone equally conspiratorial, “I’ve never made _you_ dance for _it_.”

I conceded the point. And no more was said on _that_ matter.

“Paganini won his Stradivarius in a wager. A Signor Pasini of Parma challenged him to play a very difficult piece, sight unseen, and he did so with _foudroyante exécution_ , that is to say, like lightning,” Holmes made frantic sawing of invisible bow across invisible fiddle, “that the man surrendered the prize at once.”

“Bravo.”

Holmes tilted his head and bowed slightly.

“And it was Paganini’s devotion to his violin that cured him of his gambling habit, a compulsion which much plagued his youth, once and for all. He was down to three francs, his beloved Guarnerius, and an offer from a prince to buy the instrument for two thousand francs. He almost despaired, but at the last moment, his fortunes changed and he won. His violin was spared and he never returned to games of chance again.”

“Extraordinary,” I breathed. “To quit just like that.”

I was then startled by the arrival of the soups.

When the waiter disappeared, Holmes said,

“Paganini was more astute than I am, in one aspect.”

“In only one?” I teased. “Well, yes, of course, the one.”

“Well, two. The more enviable one is that he learned, with only one test, the folly of risking a dearest companion. I fear I still play rather cavalierly with mine, even after many trials.”

Our eyes met, but I could not hold his gaze for long.

We were too exposed here.

Far too exposed.

He tumbled into his soup and I into mine and no more was said on that, or any other, subject until empty bowls had been swept away.

“So, caprices,” I remarked.

“Each a short study, exploring different skills. Twenty-four, in all.”

My brows greeted my hairline.

Holmes shot a glance at the bottle of claret, then said with a world-weariness thoroughly belied by the twinkle in his eye, “You think twenty-four too many, my dear Watson? I suppose a man might have twenty-four caprices in a lifetime.”

I slapped the table, then said in a low voice, “Ho! My dear Holmes, you’ve twenty-four _now_!”

He laughed.

“Caprice,” I said, doing my best impression of a sommelier. “Whim, fancy, notion, impulse, urge. Oh, yes. If we take the gross definition of the word, I’d say you’re quite capricious, chronically so, I’m afraid.”

“I believe I’d like to hear more about my diagnosis, Doctor.”

“What have you to trade for my insight?”

Holmes’s cheeks turned pink. It was far too forward a question in far too salacious a tone for luncheon at a decent hotel in the middle of a case. He could’ve retreated, waving the flag of professionalism or good society, and I would not have pressed the matter or thought less of him, but I confess I was elated when he replied,

“I’ve stories of Paganini. Tales of mad genius for observations on another? Oh, yes and I’ve claret.”

He raised the bottle.

“Deal,” I said.

He filled my glass.

“We’ve covered the first caprice: the violin," I said. "The second? Well.” I waved at the bottle.

He filled his own glass.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “The claret.”


	2. The Fancy of Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're keen to listen, here's [Op. 1, No. 2](http://www.batteredbox.com/SherlockianScholarshipConventional/OenologicSH.htm).

“Being a connoisseur affords professional advantage,” said Holmes, eyeing his glass. “Knowledge of—“

“The spiritual world?” I interjected.

He cringed, then continued. “—the characteristics of fermented beverages and their imbibers has aided me in solving many a case.”

I did know. Bits of seemingly trivial information such as the preference of sailors for rum, the behavior of sediment in a bottle of wine, even the price of a glass of sherry at a hotel had all been, on occasion, vitally important in uncovering the truth of a matter.

“But on a personal note, yes, Watson, I think it’s reasonable to call the fruits of the vine, at least, a fancy of mine.”

I smiled.

Holmes drank beer mostly out of convenience, for example, when a case brought him to a pub or when it fit with his disguise of the moment. He’d installed a gasogene in our rooms as a matter of hospitality to clients, many of whom drank whiskey and soda or required one to fortify them enough to confide their troubles. When it served his purposes, he joined them, but my private opinion, which might be erroneous as well as egotistical, was that Holmes drank whiskey and soda mostly because I drank whiskey and soda. On rare occasion, we shared a single glass, and the intimacy of that act never ceased to seduce or endear, depending on the timing of its occurrence.

Wine, however, Holmes adored.

“Any port in a storm?” I mused. “The urgencies of burgundies?”

Holmes feigned deafness.

“I’ve not read anywhere that Paganini shared my fancy,” he said. “And he’s quoted as saying something to the effect that nothing ill ever came of eating and drinking in moderation. _Moderato_ , like the second caprice.”

“No room in the étude for a claret-net?”

Holmes’s stare was sharp enough to pin a butterfly to canvas. I hid my grin in my glass.

“Paganini was known to take a cup of chocolate before a long journey,” Holmes said with a grimace, “and have nothing else for the remainder of the day. Something to look forward to in our declining years, perhaps.”

“Mister Vamberry will weep.”

“By then, Mister Vamberry will be retired himself, and living handsomely on the small fortune he’s accumulated from sales to me. The Montrachet alone.”

Ah, the Montrachet.

The Montrachet, that ‘something a little choice in white wines,’ was the choice when the occasion meant anything to Holmes: entertaining the Yard; celebrating the resolution of a case or the end of anxiety as to whether his sentiment for me was reciprocated (it was) and whether I wished to act on said reciprocation (I did).

Of all the spirited fancies, the Montrachet was the fanciest.

Holmes hummed.

> _The wine-cup is the little silver well_
> 
> _Where Truth, if Truth there be, doth ever dwell;_
> 
> _Death too is there,--and Death who would not seek?--_
> 
> _And Love that in itself is Heaven and Hell._

“’S quite a lot,” I sighed. “Truth, death, love. I believe I’ll have another.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holmes is quoting the [LeGalliene translation](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rub%C3%A1iy%C3%A1t_of_Omar_Khayy%C3%A1m_\(Le_Gallienne\)) of the _Rubaiyat_ of Omar Khayyam.
> 
> Two books of interest on the subject of Holmes & wine (which I haven't read):
> 
> [_Bacchus at Baker Street_](https://www.amazon.com/Bacchus-Baker-Street-Observations-Preferences/dp/0860252868) by Patricia Guy  
> [ _The Oenological Holmes_](http://www.batteredbox.com/SherlockianScholarshipConventional/OenologicSH.htm) by Steve Robinson
> 
> I found the line and it's actually a bit more severe than Holmes remembered: _Il poco mangier e il poco ber hanno mai fatto male_ (eating and drinking little have never done harm). It's from [Nicolo Paganini: A Biography](https://archive.org/details/nicolopaganinia00mattgoog) by J. G. Prod'Homme (1911).


	3. The Urge of Exhaustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEHZC_Y3pYY&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=3). I like the Sostenuto parts quite a bit.

“Paganini composed the caprices when he was only fifteen years old. He would work for ten to eleven hours at a stretch, trying a single passage in hundreds of ways, until he collapsed from exhaustion. At that age, he was still under the thumb of his tyrannical, avaricious father, but the caprices themselves also contributed, being of such difficulty that initially he could not play them! Can you imagine, Watson?”

“I can easily imagine. It’s your way.”

“How is it ‘my way’? Do I commit crimes that even I myself cannot solve?”

“I don’t know. Did you ever discover who killed Sherlock Holmes?”

He shot me a hard look.

“And I’m quite certain the thought has occurred to you, but I was referring to the first part of your statement, that Paganini would work until his body gave way. You have the same urge.” I sipped the claret, then added simply. “Hotel Dulong.”

Holmes gave a wave of the hand that might have been described as dismissive by an onlooker, but was, in fact, as good as a written confession of guilt in the court of 221b Baker Street.

The Hotel Dulong was, for me, the most memorable of the times that Holmes had broken his own iron constitution with work.

I remembered the telegram the gripped my heart like an icy fist; the journey to Lyons, which was one prolonged bout of worrying and praying to a god in whom I didn’t wholly trust; the relief at finding Holmes in a piteous state, but far more alive than I’d feared; the nursing, yes, I enjoyed it, even the squabbling; and the coaxing required to get him to agree to a convalescence in the English countryside.

“Poldhu Bay.”

That time we did not retreat to a manor home in Surrey, but rather a small cottage at the further extremity of the Cornish peninsula.

“But it’s the work, Watson,” Holmes whined. “I never remember feeling tired by work. It’s only idleness exhausts me completely.”

“Holmes, you are not a child.” I winced. “Christ, I sound like a father.”

“Not Paganini’s father, by all accounts he was never that gentle.”

“But you are a genius. And, as with Paganini, it’s your single-mindedness that contributes to your success in your field.”

Holmes looked at the bottle of claret and spoke as if addressing his remarks to it.

“Do you know Paganini never read newspapers, except articles about himself? I suppose I’m a much better conversationalist.”

“I just wish you were a better self-preservationist, Holmes.”

“That’s you.”

“I thought I was publicity.”

“You are everything, Watson!”

He’d said it too loudly.

I sipped.

He brushed invisible crumbs off the table.

We both looked ‘round the restaurant, at anyone, anything but each other.

Then finally, Holmes said,

“ _Sostenuto. Presto. Sostenuto_. The third caprice.” He hummed a few bars.

“Sostenuto, Holmes.”

“The work, Watson.”

Mine was a lover’s whispered plea.

His was a lover’s whispered rejoinder.

“We might be an opera,” I muttered under my breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've made the executive decision to place this story extra-canonical (so that I have all of canon to draw from for my comparisons between Holmes and Paganini). Most chronologists put "The Cardboard Box" in 1888 or 1889, so long before "The Devil's Foot" mentioned here. "The Reigate Squires," also mentioned here, is usually classified as earlier than "The Cardboard Box."
> 
> Not as sharp as Chapters 1 & 2\. But I think I'm going to bees next to make up for it.
> 
> I recommend a children's book with lovely illustrations: [Dark Fiddler: The Life and Legend of Nicolo Paganini](https://www.amazon.com/Fiddler-Creative-Editions-Aaron-Frisch/dp/156846200X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503201227&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+fiddler) by A. Frisch & G. Kelly (2008).


	4. The Notion of Chivalry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's. [Op. 1 No. 4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZgWBwsO2EM&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=4). It's lovely.
> 
> For $18,000 you can own [the hat](https://www.schubertiademusic.com/items/details/11125-paganini-nicol%C3%B2-paganiniaposs-hat-made-from-the-fabric-of-his-motheraposs-wedding-gown) mentioned in this chapter.

“Paganini may have got the lash from his father, but he got much love from his mother. When he was very young, she told him of a dream she had wherein an angel appeared and promised her the fulfillment of any desire. She asked that her son become the greatest of violinists. His mother’s wish came true, of course.”

Holmes refilled our glasses and continued.

“You misrepresent me at times, Watson, in your chronicles of our adventures. I have nothing but respect for the inscrutable sex. They persist and love and persist in their love, no matter the obstacles or tyranny faced. I am certain as I am of anything in this world that his mother’s dream helped Paganini endure his father’s abuse and that he loved her with all his heart.”

I held my breath.

Holmes had never spoken of his mother. That he seemed poised to do so here, on an ordinary afternoon in the decent hotel in the middle of a case, seemed extraordinary, so extraordinary that I did not notice the arrival of my smoked haddock pie.

I looked down and started at the steaming dish.

Holmes chuckled.

“Paganini tried to refute rumors that he was the son of a devil by publishing a letter from his doting mother in a periodical! Mothers.” As he pronounced the last word, one corner of his mouth curled up in a smile. “We inherit some of our notions of chivalry from them, do we not? When we’ve come across women suffering—“

“And surviving,” I added, then tucked into my pie.

“And surviving despite that suffering,” he acknowledged, “in our work, Watson, I’ve sought truth and justice for them where it may be had. Miss Stoner, Mrs. Stapleton, the widow Carey and her daughter come to mind. And where I’ve been myopic, you, my dear man, have seen fit to educate me in the errors of my thinking and gone back to right my wrongs—though you never publish those amended accounts or the tongue-lashings I received.”

“Mary Sutherland. Lady Francis Carfax,” I said between bites.

“Yes.”

“Mothers,” Holmes repeated. “Paganini had a cap made from the blue silk of his mother’s wedding gown. I’ve no maternal heirlooms, and my mother herself is, if there’s any God at all, being tended by gentle angels, much like the one that visited Paganini’s, but my grandmother on my father’s side, was a _femme formidable_ , always ready with a colourful story for a lonely child.” He smiled. “One rainy summer’s day, she confessed to slitting the throat of Barbary pirate.”

“Dear Lord! Do you think it was true?”

He nodded. “She showed me how she did it.” He pantomimed, using the neck of the bottle of claret and a butter knife. “And gifted me the weapon she used.”

“Oh!”

“It’s come down in the world, from garroting Barbary pirates to stabbing unanswered correspondence, but still quite useful. And sharp.”

I laughed. “ _Femme formidable_ , indeed. Did she bear any resemblance to the late,“ I hesitated, “Mrs. Irene Norton?”

He huffed and rolled his eyes. “Once again, you’ve done disservice in your tales of half-truths, Watson. _The Scandal in Bohemia_!” He huffed again, this time with undisguised disgust.

“Not half-truths. You did call her ‘ _the_ woman.’”

“I did and I do, out of admiration. I did not, however, say that she ‘eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.’ I admired her as an adversary. She bested me and she bested that fool the King of Bohemia and good on her for it.”

“You did not love her?” I probed. It was a very deliberate prodding, which produced the predicted response.

His eyes flashed. “No! How could I when you told the world that I am incapable of softer passions?” he sneered. “My dear Watson, I was not a grit in instrument of Irene Adler, I was not even a crack in her lens, to use your own words, I was a fly that she gently swatted—to stun, not to kill—then scooped up in a folded daily and deposited in her garden. Good. On. Her. I should like to raise a glass to her and all the queens, regardless of title or vestment, who’ve made our lives the better for their reign: mothers, grandmothers, clients, adversaries…”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and took up my glass. “Well, I suppose it’s far safer than drawing their initials on the wall with bullets…”

“…and, of course, the most important queen…”

“Oh, that would be the one whose initials you drew on the wall with bullets?”

Holmes harrumphed. “I believe that gracious lady falls in the category of ‘client.’ No, the fourth caprice is _maestoso._ ” He hummed. “And the most important, most majestic of queens…”

“Ah, yes,” I said, smiling. “To the queen bee.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another ficlet about Holmes's grandmother, [Fencing Woman](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7390423/chapters/16993602).


	5. The Bee of Bees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The puns return!
> 
> Here's [Op. 1 No. 5](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2Wv60_X17A&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=5).

“You must forgive me, Holmes, for my skep-ticism when you first confessed your interest in apiculture. I’d no idea your ideals were so hive-minded.”

Holmes looked as if he was quite prepared to carve open his pork belly and stuff me inside in place of the apple relish and the scratchings.

“Have a bee in your bonnet?” I asked, smiling at the wrathful expression that greeted my query. “Am I droning? Do wax on, my good man.”

He gripped his knife in a manner that I’m not entirely certain wasn’t learned on the knee of his grandmother, but then relaxed his hand and said placidly,

“I should like take my leisured ease in Sussex. I’ve my eye on a cottage there on the southern slope of the Downs, commanding a great view of the Channel. And, yes, as I’ve mentioned, I should like to devote myself to the study and farming of bees, observing my own little working gangs as closely as I now observe the criminal world of this gloomy metropolis. I shall also record my observations and conclusions for posterity. It will be the magnum opus of my latter years.”

He paused to sip, then continued.

“I am not quite ready to quit my work, Watson but they, the bees, certainly beckon in a manner that grows more inviting by the day. And this much is certain: when I do decide to retire from professional life, I shall abandon all this,” I noted he addressed the pork belly and not the claret, “wholly and completely.”

Something in my stomach churned in a most disagreeable manner.

“Right,” I said. “Bees. Interesting.”

“I don’t suppose there’s much parallel to Paganini, as I don’t think he had any occupation but the violin, save doting on his son and attempting to maintain a modicum of health, but—oh, yes! Not at the end of his career, but rather toward the beginning of it. He disappeared from public view for more than three years, living in a chateau of a Tuscan lady of rank. His hostess played the guitar. Paganini threw himself into the study of the instrument and composed some pieces for violin and guitar. He may have also study agriculture, and who knows, maybe cultivated a fascination for bees as well. The fifth caprice certainly does bear some resemblance to a noisy swarm. Watson?”

“Hmm? Fascinating. Bees.”

Holmes narrowed his gaze, and I felt my cheeks warm under his scrutiny.

“You are, like the fifth caprice, _agitato_.”

“It’s the claret,” I said.

Pathetic lie.

Holmes’s eyes went to the bottle, but his mind was elsewhere. Admiring chalk cliffs?

“I’ve made serious inquiries about the Sussex cottage, but I have not purchased it yet,” he said.

“No?” It was more cough then word.

“No, I was waiting for a reprieve in work, yours, mine, ours, that we might travel there together. I wish for you to see it with your own eyes—“

“Well, I suppose I’ll be almost beyond the ken by then. An occasional week-end visit,” I said to myself, but Holmes was still talking.

“—that is, before I ask you formally to join me in living there.”

I started. “Oh, yes?”

“Naturally.”

I coughed and sniffed and buried my face in a napkin.

“Oh, dear me, far too much pepper in the haddock, goodness! Whatever do they smoke it with?”

“Smoke,” said Holmes plainly.

I performed a bit of comedy with the linen until my composure was restored.

“Right,” I said. “Heady stuff.”

Holmes stared, blinked, then said in low voice,

“Watson, you did not seriously imagine I had plans to retire alone!”

“Of course, I did! You never mentioned me in your plans and even just now you said that you were abandoning everything! ‘Wholly and completely’ I believe was the phrase.”

“But not—!”

I smiled at the unspoken ‘you,’ hanging in the miasma above our heads, above haddock and pork belly and even claret.

Holmes leaned back against his chair. “Good Lord, man, what a lonely life that would be! Me, some old housekeeper, and the bees?”

He took a long swig from his glass.

“And leaving all sentiment aside, why I might come across a noteworthy puzzle or two, and then what? Be my own chronicler? We saw how well that went the last time. Your editor nearly cut the strings!”

“You said I deserted you for a wife.”

“You did!”

“My brother’s wife, his widow, and the legal entanglement resulting from the surprise appearance of and outrageous claims made by two people purporting to be his illegitimate children. Violet was alone and beside herself! It would’ve been cruel to refuse her aide.”

“Nevertheless.”

It was a whine, child-like and beneath him.

Holmes fiddled a bit with his meal, took two bites, then said,

“Paganini tired of life at the chateau, the guitar, and, perhaps, the attentions of the Tuscan lady of rank as well. He returned to public life and the violin in 1804. I am no Paganini, Watson, as far as you are concerned, age doesn’t wither, nor custom stale…”

He waved his hand.

“Sussex, then?” I said.

“Sussex, if you’ll have us, me and my queen. Might be a quiet life,” he warned.

“I doubt it. I expected it will be buzzing with activity.”

“Oh, Watson.”

“But however shall I improve each shining hour? And not let Satan make mischief with my idle hands?”


	6. The Freak of Diabolical Collusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 6](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56vQsMqrfYI&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=6)

“Speaking of dark forces,” said Holmes, “someone wrote of Paganini, ’Let us rejoice that this enchanter is our contemporary. Let him be glad of it himself; if he had played his violin like that two hundred years ago, he would have been burned as a magician.’ I believe, Watson, that you yourself, after one of my more revelatory deductions, made something akin to the latter statement.”

I laughed. “I’ve accused you of devilry on more than one occasion, Holmes.”

“Accusations of diabolical collusion plagued Paganini for most of his professional life. He played the violin with such extraordinary, unprecedented prowess that no one could believe the source of his gift to be a wholly natural one. Some said he was the devil himself; his gaunt frame, long hair, dark costume, and angular postures bolstered this argument. Some said he’d sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent; perhaps in the prison where he allegedly served a sentence of eight years for killing his mistress, or her lover, or both. At least one concert spectator said reported seeing the devil—horns, tail, the whole figure—at Paganini’s elbow. A few claimed that the tormented sounds that Paganini made with his instrument were a result of stringing his bow with the intestines of his murdered mistress.”

I grimaced. “Dear God, that’s macabre.”

“Indeed. He tried to refute these rumors—I mentioned the letter from his mother published in a periodical—he also made his own protests in print, at public venues, but to no avail. I, of course, have a slightly different problem with my devilry.”

“Oh, yes? Is yours in the details?”

I was mildly offended that Holmes did not even pause to throw a chastising glance my way.

“When I—in my own words or by way of your pen—explain my methods, why, everyone thinks it’s so simple! And the spell of witchcraft, magic, devilry, what have you, is gone! ‘Oh, I could’ve done that!’ they say. That they don’t do it, that no one does it on any regular basis is, of course, never said.”

“Then let me say it: no one does what you do. And accusations of ‘diabolical collusion’ against you or Paganini or any genius of your caliber regardless of field, fail to respect the very hard and sacrifice put forth to attain such skill.”

Holmes blushed, mumbled a word or two of thanks, then turned his attention to his pork belly.

I’d washed down the last of my smoked haddock pie when he refilled our glasses and spoke,

“ _Simile e sempre legato_. The sixth caprice. The trill. Left hand tremolo with legato bowing.” He made a pantomime with the hands.

“Well, I prefer the devil I know to the one that I don’t,” I said with a proud grin.

Holmes frowned. “You might well tremble, just like the strings of the Dark Fiddler, at the whole truth for Paganini and I may not be devils, but we are no angels either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The opening quote is taken from "Virtuosity, the Violin, the Devil ... What Really Made Paganini "Demonic"?" by M. Kawabata (2007).


	7. The Perversity of Evil (Warning for mentions of rape, forced stillbirth, abduction, and murder)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of rape, forced stillbirth, abduction, and murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 7](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z56PBVAcGk&index=7&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI).

“It is remarkable that no one, not the public or the press, got hold of the truth. The principal rumors revolved around Paganini murdering his mistress, her lover, or both. There was often mention of a sentence of eight years in prison. The reality was eight days.”

“Eight days for murder? Seems a bit light.”

“Eight days for abduction and rape.”

I fell silent.

Holmes continued.

“In 1814, at the age of thirty-two, Paganini bedded a twenty-year old prostitute named Angelina Cavanna. She became pregnant. Paganini took her from Genoa to Parma and forced her to drink a concoction that produced a stillbirth. The girl’s father learned of what had happened and had charges drawn. Paganini went to prison, but then made financial restitution and was released.”

Holmes had spoken so quickly that it took a few moments for me to grasp the import of his words. Then I realised the reason for his hasty speech.

“It was excellent. Our compliments to the wise and wonderful soul who prepared it,” he said, tilting his head and addressing the waiter with sincere sentiment but, I knew, false joviality.

As our plates were cleared, I thought about Holmes the murderer—Holmes the house-breaker did not trouble me in the least, and I couldn’t fathom my friend even contemplating Paganini’s crimes.

Surprisingly, the first name that came to mind was not Moriarty, but rather Openshaw. His was a death that Holmes might have prevented were he indeed the future-seer that rumor purported.

Holmes—well, Holmes and I—had often taken matters of law and justice into our own hands. What if James Ryder were not truly as repentant or Captain Crocker as truly noble as they’d seemed? The blood of any further crimes they committed would certainly be on our hands.

And then there was, of course, Moriarty. His death gave me less pause, but thinking of ‘the Napoleon of Crime’ led me to think of the three years that Holmes and I had been apart, when he’d been a dead man walking, roaming the world whilst I grieved for him.

He’d told me a few stories of the places he’d been, but it could not have been all light-hearted, colourful anecdotes suitable for recounting before a hearth.

After all he’d had a job to do and I am not so naïve as to suppose that one can untangle a spider’s web without violence. Holmes was hunted prey, to be sure, but he might have also turned predator and where the definition of one ceases and another begins is grey.

Good men might do wicked deeds. It was uncomfortable truth without resolution, without ease.

I broke from my ruminations just in time to realise that Holmes was still speaking.

“Trifle and coffee?” I repeated when the waiter had left. “Rather heavy for luncheon.”

“Our palates require sweetening, and our minds, stimulation, the spur to the flank, as it were, for I seem to have led us into the mire, conversationally.” One corner of his mouth trembled, and he added, “And perhaps spiritually, too, my dear man.”

I fixed him with a hard stare, then leaned forward and whispered, “I am a soldier. And a doctor. And a widower. I’ve tried to eat my gun as many times as I’ve fired it. Lead me where you will, by now, there is no undiscovered country.”

He nodded.

“And,” I said. “Knowing what I know and knowing what I don’t, I still prefer my devil and his fiddle.”

His lips twisted in a smile. “Oh, I don’t know. Have you heard the seventh caprice?” He hummed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The information about Paganini’s crimes are from Paganini, the Genoese by G. Courcy (1957) cited in "Virtuosity, the Violin, the Devil ... What Really Made Paganini "Demonic"?" by M. Kawabata (2007).


	8. The Humours of Tobacco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzlDoz8uSQY&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=8)

“The eighth caprice is the second of the studies in a tempo _maestoso_.”

“Did Paganini share your humours regarding the majestic, golden leaf?” I asked, nodding to Holmes’s hand, the one that was sliding down his side, patting pockets.

It was only natural, _Holmes’s_ nature, that is, to want a nice smoke with a nice meal and a nice drink.

“I don’t know.” Holmes’s lips twitched. His hand fell without retrieving his cigarette case. “Paganini suffered from a good many physical ailments his whole life. At one point, his teeth were held on by string! Later he had them all pulled.” He covered his teeth with his gums and chomped.

“Holmes.”

He shrugged, then whined, “Am I so transparent, Watson?”

“Only to one who knows you well. Like right now, you’re itching to smoke a cigar, but it’s luncheon and there’s a gaggle of respectable ladies at the table down-wind and you’re too much of a gentleman to spoil their gathering with your smoke—though you have no qualms about spoiling any moment of my life with it.”

He held my gaze while he sipped, then set the glass on the table.

“Well, let’s hear the rest of it,” he said, refilling my glass though it was only half-empty.

“You take snuff when you want to show off that gold and amethyst box, the gift from the King of Bohemia.”

“Go on.”

“You smoke a pipe, one of the litter you keep on the mantelpiece, when you’re in a meditative mood. The old black clay one is your favourite and as much as your counsellor as the violin and I are, but you’ve also the briar root and, when you’re feeling disputatious, the cherrywood. You smoke when you think. The more thought a problem requires, the more you poison the air.”

“True.”

“You keep your pipe tobacco, of all places, in the toe of Turkish slipper.”

“Also true.”

“You smoke cigarettes when you’re agitated, or when you have no other choice. You pace.”

I pantomimed his hunched back, bobbing head, gesticulating hand, puffing lips.

He laughed and clapped his hands together.

“Your cigars, though high-end, are kept, unwisely, in the coal scuttle. Nevertheless, you prefer one after dinner, or when drinking certain libations.”

I nodded at the bottle between us.

“Excellent, Watson. You’ve captured my habits and humours like the expert Boswell that you are, but you’re leaving out one key element.”

I frowned. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and sometimes it’s Mrs. Hudson’s curtains ablaze from one of your malodorous—and flammable—investigations?”

He huffed. “No.”

“And then we learn that Mrs. Hudson has a quite impressive set of pipes on her? Specifically, we she dumps tea on your head and explains the increases in the rent?

“No!”

“And then we watch our modest monthly savings go up in smoke?”

“The work, Watson!”

“Ah, yes, the work. It was the footprints in the Egyptian cigarette ash that alerted you to hiding place of Professor Coram’s estranged wife, Anna.”

“Precisely. And ash is not just a tool. You remember my mention of my monograph describing one hundred forty types of tobacco ash? The ash itself has proved of supreme importance as a clue in many cases. Thank goodness most men’s habits are as fixed as my own! Ash often helps narrow the search for smoker, does it not? Witnesses, suspects, perpetrators.”

I had to concede it did.

“And even dear men who prefer to smoke cigarettes from Bradley, Oxford Street on hound-haunted, moonlit moors; now put that in your pipe, my dear Watson, and—”

“Thief!” I cried. “That’s my line!”


	9. The Quirk of Dressing Gowns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 9](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lbzlby9vsPQ&index=9&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI)

“Clothes make the man, so they say. Paganini was fond of dark suits. On one occasion, however, his stubborn demur on the matter of apparel changed the course of his career. It was after he had been appointed as leader of the orchestra and solo violinist for the Court of Maria Anna, the sister of Napoleon, when she was Princess of Lucca. The Court itself moved from Lucca to Florence. The Princess became Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and Paganini was appointed Court Musical Director…”

As Holmes’s voice droned, I thought of colour.

The dark red of the claret before me.

The purple of a dressing gown of memory.

Holmes had three dressing gowns. The purple flannel he most often wore on holidays, that is, days when he was least likely to be visited by paying clients, but might, perchance, entertain a befuddled member of Scotland Yard, who in his desperate state, would not give the garment’s unusual colour—a dusky mauve, the hue of violets preserved in sugar or pressed between the pages of a heavy tome and forgotten—a second thought. I remember that Holmes was wearing the purple dressing gown a few days after Christmas when I returned to Baker Street to find him contemplating a battered old hat. The hat and its goose companion had been the first features of interest in a case of a famous, and infamous, gem, which had been stolen. The story became one of my most popular, The Case of the Blue Carbuncle.

And what a bonny blue that dreadful rock had been! Holmes’s second dressing gown was the colour of the stone’s darkest facet. The blue dressing gown was his silk, and a personal favourite of mine for the soft texture alone. To be honest, I found it quite difficult to refrain from frequent and wholly unnecessary, brushes of Holmes’s shoulder, and even once a scandalous hand at his back, when he was wearing that gown. But I did refrain from such action, resist such temptation, when he was working. One such case was the disappearance of Mister Neville St. Clair, and I remember Holmes swathed in that blue dressing gown, in the comfortable guest room afforded us by Mrs. St. Clair, perched cross-legged upon a sort of Eastern divan of pillows and cushions, with the old briar-pipe between his lips and his eyes fixed vaguely on a corner of the ceiling. The following morning, I awoke to find an ounce of shag tobacco had gone up in smoke and all that remained was a thick haze and a curious solution to a curious problem.

Despite the allure of the blue silk for me, I am almost certain that Holmes himself preferred the mouse-coloured wool one. It was the one he wore most often: day, night, all seasons and moods. I remember him removing it from the effigy of himself, the clever bust that had lured Colonel Moran into an unwise attempt on Holmes’s life. I remember watching him wrap the wool ‘round his thinned frame and remarking to myself, ‘yes, that is the Holmes of old,’ without disguise and with little vestige of those three unhappy years we’d spent apart. If clothes make the man, then certainly that dressing gown of humble colour and even humbler weave was one of the vestments that made the great detective Sherlock Holmes.

“Watson!”

“Hmm?”

“You haven’t been listening at all.”

“Napoleon, something…”

Holmes huffed. “In 1813, Paganini attended a state function in Florence wearing his military uniform as he’d been given the rank of Captain in the Royal Guard. He was ordered to change clothing. He refused. He resigned.”

“Not a very interesting story, Holmes.”

Holmes’s eyebrow rose. “And just what interesting thought has you so enraptured, my dear man?”

“Well, I was thinking,” I pinched the stem of the glass between two fingers, “about this claret and wondering if it would be possible to obtain some silk in this very same colour.”

All pique vanished from his expression. “A gift?”

I smiled. “Hmm. No rush. I’ve got, oh, four months.”

“Dressing gown?” he purred.

“Mind-reader,” I accused, casting him a wry look.

“Might you consider a velvet, my haptic friend?”

“Oh, absolutely.”


	10. The Rib of Fowl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the short chapter. It's a bit of a ret-con, but such is the lot of true WIPer. 
> 
> Here's the [Op. 1 No. 10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLCNBML_klU&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=10) (which Okapi Minor says sounds like a flock of birds)
> 
> I get all my luncheon ideas from [Simpson's in the Strand](https://www.simpsonsinthestrand.co.uk/bill-of-fare/lunch-dinner), which I assume hasn't changed much in 120 years.

Our coffee and trifle had still not arrived, and presently I suffered the mild disappointment of all patrons in my situation when our waiter, seemingly en route to our table, passed us by and alit before the respectable ladies downwind.

My disappointment turned to curiosity when I spied the same water on his return journey with face pink and tray still laden with heavy dishes.

Holmes sighed. “I could have warned them that the chicken ballotine would be unsatisfactory. Had they possessed even a fraction of your knowledge of my habits, they would have regarded my selection of the pork belly as a caution bordering on edict.”

I smiled and thought of the brace of grouse to which Inspector Athelney Jones was invited during the case known to the _Strand_ -reading public as _The Sign of Four_. Then I thought of the woodcock and the pheasant that had been laid out for Mister and Mrs. Francis Hay Moulton. I thought of Christmas geese and summer partridge. I thought of a breakfast of curried chicken, which turned out to be something else entirely.

And then I thought of the moment when I’d been most proud of Holmes—and when I say ‘proud’ I mean it in its most joyous form, undiluted by awe or lust or any other sentiment. After inquiring of Mister Henry Baker where he’d purchased the blue-carbuncle-laying goose, Holmes explained:

“I am somewhat of a fowl fancier.”

No one fancied the fowl—and the foul—more than Mister Sherlock Holmes, and no one fancied a well-executed pun more than his faithful Boswell.

And perhaps Holmes read all these thoughts as they passed through my mind, but he only hummed and remarked,

“The tenth caprice has been likened to the flight of a flock of, no doubt delectable, birds.”


	11. The Impulse of Feigned Death.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 11](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlhwO532Kq8&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=11)

“Paganini’s career almost ended ere it began. Before his musical studies commenced, he suffered a bout of measles that left him in a cataleptic state for a day. He was given up for dead and initial preparations were made. A faint tremor of the shroud saved him from premature burial.”

“Ah! You share the impulse of Lazarus.”

Holmes tilted his head.

I drank the claret and did not give voice to thought.

Holmes’s resurrections filled me with sentiments akin, no doubt, to those of the mother and father of Paganini: joy, relief, awe.

An answer to prayer.

But Holmes’s dying was another matter.

He had the most maddening impulse for feigning death!

Was it the actor’s impulse, the artistic imagination to dare what most would not?

Was it the crime-solver’s impulse, the drive of one who dealt in death so often and so prosaically that he considered it a choice like any other? Or whose dabbling and provoking forced him to use measures equal in severity to the dangers he faced?

Was it the philosopher’s impulse, the curious thinker simply wanting to know?

I suspected that for Holmes it was all these elements and more unfathomable to me. His motivations might be opaque, but my role was crystal clear.

I was witness. I was accomplice. And I was dupe.

I had made peace it, but I did not like it.

Reichenbach was the most grievous betrayal, of course. Holmes claimed that he did not reveal his secret to me because he desired that the public have a convincing account of his unhappy end, and he kept that secret from me for three years because he feared that my affectionate regard for him should have tempted me to some indiscretion that would betray him.

He’d offered similar argument for keeping me in the dark as to his whereabouts during the Baskerville case, claiming that had I known he was hiding on the moor, I might have wished to tell him something or brought him some comfort and thus risked his discovery, which was in his mind vital to the case. In that instance, however, it was his mere absence from Dartmoor, and not from the whole of the living world, which was feigned.

Death purportedly had Holmes in its grips once more when he’d received a tainted box from a Mister Culverton Smith. And again, I was used for his aims yet kept unawares of them because, in his words, dissimulation finds no place in my many talents and I would not have been able to impress upon Smith the vital necessity of his appearance at the Baker Street rooms had I been privy to the scheme.

The attack on Holmes by blackguards in the employ of Baron Gruner brought about a change in attitude, however. As soon as I reached Baker Street, Holmes confided that the newspapers’ account of the ‘murderous’ nature of the assault was intentional hyperbole; he then recruited me to encourage this rumour in the public. He also bid me play the role of expert in Chinese art to gain access to the Baron’s home. The Baron knew me for imposter and emissary of Holmes almost at once.

And it was through solemn reflection following that case that I finally rid myself of the bitter resentment that slept in my heart. I decided that Holmes was right. Dissimulation was not one of my talents, and I should not seek to cultivate it nor mourn its lack. He might view my affectionate regard as a tree that, at times, bore unsuitable fruit, but I would remain steadfast in that affectionate regard and stalwart in my support of him.

I would give him fruit, shade, shelter, wood, whatever he required, for love is not contract, but rather alms-giving.

I met his grey eyes as he refilled my glass, then dropped my gaze to his lips for as he spoke the din of the dining room swelled.

“Resurrection is only sweet in the homecoming. And you are home, Watson.”

I smiled and knew, once more, that I was loved. Schemes, strategies, plans and performances would come and go but this man’s heart would not be occluded.

And neither would mine.


	12. The Fitfulness of Perfectionism & Self-Reproach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiXWZ60ZvAM&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=12) [Which sounds like worry and nagging doubts to me]

“Paganini once made an error that almost cost him his life. He concluded a concert in Ferrara with a musical jest, telling the audience that he would use his violin to imitate the noises of animals, birds chirping, dogs howling, etcetera. He ended the performance with the braying of an ass, which he performed twice, without knowing—for he read nothing except press which concerned himself—that the people of the villages that surrounded Ferrara bore a strong prejudice toward those of the town, one manifestation of which was to call them “hee-haws” and bray like asses to ridicule them. When Paganini played his trick, the audience rushed the stage in a mob-rage, ready to avenge the slight. He fled through a side door and left the town at once.”

I laughed.

The coffee and trifle had finally arrived. By mutual and mute agreement, Holmes and I took a respite from the claret.

I sipped the bitter brew and remarked, “Even genius may be ignorant.”

“Were that all our mistakes end in nothing graver than a near escape,” Holmes said.

Holmes held himself to a high professional standard, and much of the time, he met and even exceeded his own mark, but when he failed, when he fell short of his expectations, oh, the recriminations were so very harsh!

He called himself obtuse. He called himself fool. Often. Once he called himself and me—out of earshot of Mrs. Hudson, thankfully—old women. He called himself idiot. Once he said he needed to be kicked to Charing Cross. Once he asked where the ideal reasoner of my depictions was.

But the oddest, severest, and most provoking instance was at the Westville Arms, a country inn where Holmes and I stayed while he investigated the death of John Douglas.

Having woke me by his entrance, he then stood by my bed and whispered,

“I say, Watson, would you be afraid to sleep in the same room with a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?”

“Not in the least,” I said.

“Ah, that’s lucky,” he replied.

He didn’t utter another word that night.

I did not let him.

In word, deed, and omission, I reminded him how marvelously human he was. We spent the night in silent and scandalous communion, and in the morning, I hope it’s not much petty pride to say, Sherlock Holmes was a slightly different man.

I saw the fruit of my labours in a later case, the one concerning the disappearance of Lady Francis Carfax. Holmes did ask what had become of his brain at the moment of acute realisation, but after the case’s conclusion, he told me that, should I care to add it to my annals, I should do so as ‘an example of that temporary eclipse to which even the best-balanced mind may be exposed.’ He then added, ‘Such slips are common to all mortals, and the greatest is he who can recognise and repair them.’

I remember grinning wildly, warmly when he spoke those words, and in any account of the case that I submit for public consumption, I shall include them, but not the ones, of course, that followed.

“Don’t look so smug, my dear man,” said Holmes. “That night in the Westville Arms, your superior manner of instruction did not wholly obliterate the substance of the lesson.”

“I did not anticipate my words to be regurgitated with such exactitude.”

“No? With so apt a pupil welcomed into your classroom?”

We bandied roguish smirks until finally Holmes said, “But the case, Watson…”


	13. The Kink of the Turkish Bath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here's Op 1. No. 13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rL2LEGFzxI&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=13).

“For challenge of composition and spectacle of concert, Paganini often removed strings from his violin and played on the remaining two, or even one. His first performance in this style was at the Court of Napoleon. In regular attendance was, in Paganini’s words, ‘a fascinating creature’ with whom he shared a mutual, but hidden, affection, and it was for that person that he played ‘A Love Scene’ with the E string as the voice of a youth and G that of a maiden. The song replicated the crescendos and decrescendos of an _affaire de coeur_.”

“How romantic. And clever,” I replied.

A Love Scene.

Two strings, separated by space, in vibration, telling a story was very much like two forms, lying in parallel, separated by the least space that a pair of drying-room couches afforded, in vibration, that is, telling stories at the bath.

Ah, the bath!

Astute readers of my chronicles may have noted a discrepancy in my accounts of Holmes’s attitudes towards the Turkish bath. In one story, he questions my preference, seeming to tout the superiority of the home-made article to the Turkish, yet in another tale, I state that we shared a weakness for latter establishments. To this charge of inconsistency, I plead ‘not guilty’ and counter that anyone clever enough to spot the shift in Holmes’s view is clever enough to surmise its cause.

Quite simply, I changed his mind.

For Holmes, the bath was romance. As far as I know, he never attended without me, and when we did attend together, he never arrived in a dark mood. While our rooms at Baker Street bore witness to every facet of his personality and every station along his lengthy track of humours and while those rooms also served Holmes in a multiplicity of purposes (consulting room, laboratory, study, stage, and cell), the bath was different.

Holmes didn’t seem to _think_ at the bath, or better said, he thought as little as that magnificent brain of his allowed.

At the bath, he was at peace, at ease, less reticent and more human than anywhere else; and in that relaxed state, the stories, and the cheek, quite naturally, flowed.

Our evening rambles, in contrast, were conducted for the most part in silence, and even when Holmes spoke, it was of some feature of the world around us, but at the bath, where we lay like E and G strings, he spoke of himself. And when he looked at me, well, let’s say that he could undress me with his eyes even when I wore only a towel.

I preferred the dry heat, and he the moist. When we’d had enough of being baked and poached, respectively, we’d usually rendezvous in the drying room. If I happened to be in the sauna by myself, Holmes would fetch me, his gaze as hot as the air about us. When temptation of carnality was too great, we went downstairs to the stone-lined pools, but more of often than not, we ended up on the couches, swapping stories of childhood and dreams of old age.

He talked about bees. I talked about Mary.

He recited poetry. I told bawdy jokes.

He feigned sleep. I did sleep, but always with the towel draped that he might ogle, that is, observe me to his heart’s content.

Heart’s content. A most apt description for us at the bath.

“Queensberry rules.”

The phrase jolted me from my reverie.

Holmes shot me a stern, admonishing glance, then said, “Paganini was then prompted by the Princess to compose a song with only the G string, which he did, a sonata he named ‘Napoleon’ and played for the Emperor’s birthday.”

Suddenly, a bevy of clergymen shuffled by our table; two paused to greet Holmes.

I mumbled my apologies when the covey had passed.

Holmes waved a hand. “Watson, what say you to eschewing the bath on Northumberland Avenue and trying the bath on Jermyn Street next time?”

“What’s the allure?”

“I’ve heard they have a tattooist in residence of some note. He specialises in dragons.” His grey eyes widened and lit with mischief when I laughed.

“Holmes, is Captain Basil in the market for some portable art on his own private canvas?”

“No. But as a collector of minutiae about various trades, I would like to interview the artist. What more identifying feature can there be than a tattoo?”

I had to agree. “Do you suppose I shall be lead into the temptation of getting myself inked? Perhaps a stout green sea serpent from here,” I pointed to my shoulder, then drew my finger to my wrist, “to here. That way when I flex my arm just so it might wriggle.”

Holmes’s lips curled into a grin, but then he glanced quickly about the room and checked himself, ironing his expression into one of passivity bordering on indifference.

But I wasn’t done teasing him.

“Jermyn Street?” I said as if searching my memory. “Oh, that means we’ll come home smelling of Hammam Bouquet.”

I was certain that the image in my mind was the one in Holmes’s, for he leaned forward and whispered in a frosty voice,

“You are too much, Doctor Watson.”

I hummed. “Queensberry rules?”

“Employ them, now! Before we are ejected from this upright establishment.”

“I think you’re exaggerating.”

“You can’t see your face.”

I looked into a spoon. “Perhaps you’re right.”

“In this, always.”


	14. The Sport of Boxing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7TazR2kH70&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=14) (known for its brass-like fanfare)

Our use of ‘Queensberry rules’ as coded caution against displays of intimacy in public referred to the Marquess of Queensberry’s role in the trial of Oscar Wilde, but the denotation of the phrase had relevance in Holmes’s life as well.

I said, “I am thinking of the original laws of the guava…”

Holmes stared, then shook his head minutely.

Chilean guava was known to be Queen Victoria’s favourite fruit; it was small and round and red.

Laws, rules. Guava, Queen’s berry. Law of the guava, Queensberry rules.                   

“…and how much I enjoy celebrating the day after Christmas with you.”

The day after Christmas was, of course, Boxing Day.

Holmes grimaced. “Even when your word play is interred, Watson, it is redolent.” Then his expression changed. His eyes twinkled and his lips curled in a sly smile. “If you value your ears...”

“Oh, no!” I cried in mock terror and put my hands to the sides of my head.

“…I should cease at once.”

Boxing was Holmes’s sport.

His prowess with singlestick and sword paled in comparison to his skill as a pugilist. He was undoubtedly one of the finest boxers of his weight that I had ever seen, and anyone who’d ever met him in the ring, then met him later in his professional capacity, would often remark that he’d wasted his talents as a detective.

He was a wonder! He had a swordsman’s grace and a singlestick player’s ruthlessness. His cross-hit under the jaw was as violent as it was stealth. I’d seen him send home a magnificent straight left and enough lefts and rights to follow to put his foe in a cart on _his_ way home.

He’d studied boxing at school and had in his younger days pursued it further, but now his fights, perhaps like his acting, were all in the service of his work. There were occasional attacks in pubs and on dark streets as well as proper fights as cover for surveillance of persons of interest in a case.

I preferred the proper fights, of course, where the laws of the guava more likely to be observed. What freedom to ogle a half-dressed Holmes in public! And what satisfaction, veteran gambler that I am, of betting on the man that I loved and being guaranteed—save the time Holmes’s suspect left early and he threw the fight on purpose—of leaving with a tidy sum. For the privilege of watching Holmes, I willingly donned the ludicrous disguises he selected for me.

Some fights were planned. Some fights were not. Sometimes I was in attendance as spectator, sometimes as confederate. Sometimes I was at 221b, wearing a path in the rug with my pacing. Sometimes I was caught wholly unawares by him tumbling, or springing, up the stairs.

Regardless, Holmes never emerged from any scuffle wholly unscathed, which meant there was always the patching-up, which, provided the injuries sustained were not severe, was my favourite part.

It was my favourite part, of course, because, it was mine.

Mending the minor cuts and abrasions. Tending to the lumps on the forehead and the bruised sides. Sewing up the gashes. And, of course, then there were his hands…

“Herr Hund, no!”

A square, brown muzzle invaded and wholly occupied my circle of vision, dispelling my reverie quicker and surer than even a word of warning from Holmes.

Warm snorts tickled my skin and a warmer tongue licked my cheek as two paws weighed heavy on my thigh and the room erupted in chaos.

Waiters rushed towards me, shouting in English. A man with a leash snapped into pieces rushed towards me, shouting in German. The gaggle of respectable ladies honked and hooted. The bevy of clergymen peeped and popped. Many diners simply fled at the sight of the beast.

For my part, I was not alarmed. I knew well the difference between a blood-thirsty hound and a sporting one.

And Holmes? What did he do?

Holmes rescued the comestibles, doubling over bottle and bowls in his lap in laughter, and when the dog had been called off and order almost restored, he cried,

“Now _that’s_ a boxer’s entrance worthy of the brassy fanfare of Paganini’s fourteenth caprice!”


	15. The Desire of Hands & Feet (Warning for mentions of foot fetish!Holmes)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for (non-graphic) mention of foot fetish! Holmes. Watson's hand fetish, I believe, is canon :)
> 
> Here's [Op. 1 No. 15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKuNt_DRp54&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=15).
> 
> A special thanks to my two trifle-pickers!

Holmes’s valour was for naught, however, because as soon as order had been fully restored, the owner of the restaurant was before our table, making profuse apologies and promising a freshly prepared dessert. I noticed that his apology did not extend to another bottle of claret, which was for the best. Holmes and I had already vanquished more than half the contents of the original one and neither of us showed any sign of halting the pace of our consumption, despite being on a case, the details of which were growing fainter in my mind, drowned out by the strains of an ancient violin.

“Paganini’s hands are noteworthy,” announced Holmes as he refilled our glasses.

“Oh, really? Another characteristic that you share.”

A single twitch of the corner of his mouth was only sign he’d even heard my remark. My eyes caressed the fingers holding the bottle.

Holmes set the bottle on the table and held up his own hand, palm facing me.

Well now, who was breaking Queensberry rules like an Irish playwright on a Continental holiday?

I attempted to quell my body’s stirring and pay attention to the lesson that was, of course, at hand.

“In relation to the size of his palm, Paganini’s fingers were unusually, disproportionately long,” said Holmes, pointing with the index finger of one hand and driving me half-mad, “and according to contemporary accounts, extraordinarily flexible. They would have had to be to achieve the monstrous gaps required to play some of his compositions.”

He then put an invisible violin to his chin and curled his left hand around its invisible neck, demonstrating the aforementioned monstrous gaps.

After a quick, but bloodless bout, pun bested lust and I said,

“Ah, well, then it’s fair to say Paganini had a natural advantage, perhaps not quite in the palm of his hand, but...”

It was then that the substance of Holmes’s comments caught up with me.

“The measurements of his hands were recorded for posterity, Holmes?”

“More macabre. A cast was made of his right hand after death.”

I frowned.

Holmes shot me a whip-hard look. “No,” he said firmly.

“What?” I answered.

“Watson, no,” he repeated.

With such a tone, he might have been addressing Herr Hund. I took offense.

“What?!” I asked again. This time, temper flared.

Holmes huffed and leaned forward. “No, you may not have a cast made of my hands after I am dead,” he said.

Then I, too, leaned forward, and hissed back, “What’s the probability you leave a body _handy_ next time?”

His grey eyes flashed.

End of round one, we both shrank back to our corners, nursing our wounds and our claret—with expressions far too sour, I will admit, for spirit so sweet.

“What about now?” I charged, bounding back into the ring.

It was a foolish, reckless jab, borne of spite and mild inebriation.

Holmes frowned.

I raised an eyebrow. “Why wait?”

Holmes’s eyes widened. “For what purpose would you need a cast of my hands now, Doctor Watson?”

“Well, there’s the professional purpose,” I said, my voice cool and even. “As of Paganini’s, there may be researchers who’d wish to examine it. Remember Doctor Mortimer, coveting your skull?” And here I dropped my tone to a hushed whisper. “It may also serve a domestic function as well, for, you know, separations, cases, or foul humours of any length.”

My eyelashes fluttered far too coquettishly.

Holmes blinked once.

I smiled, then drained my glass in celebration of the rare moment when the humbly, bumbly Doctor Watson surprises the great and observant Sherlock Holmes with a blow that he did not see coming.

I met Holmes’s gaze, forcing myself not to flinch, retreat, or redden under scalpel-sharp scrutiny.

Finally, he said,

“Maybe. I agree that your appreciation of my hands is a matter of record, public and private.”

I nodded and made no further comment on the matter.

Holmes’s hands were my caprice, easily discernible to any regular reader of my chronicles in _The Strand_ ; Holmes’s desire, however, was one I had not discovered until quite recently when I’d woke from a nap on a drying-room couch and I caught him, pink-faced and rapt.

“Feet?” I asked.

I’ve never seen him look so nervous, so uncertain of himself, not even when we’d confessed the full nature of our sentiments toward one another soon after his return from the dead.

He gave a single nod and rolled away from me.

“Holmes,” I looked about and, finding us quite alone, continued, “you can’t think I’d judge you for something like that?”

He turned back. “Can’t I? Is it not unusual?”

“Quite the contrary.”

He stared.

I smiled. “Just looking?”

“You visited a specialty masseur once. Here.”

“Ah, yes, what a wonder he was! I felt sorry for him, though, with you, peppering him with questions for the whole session. It wasn’t for a monograph, was it?”

Holmes shook his head. “It was distraction—from base desire.”

“Still have your notes?”

He tapped his temple. “Always.”

“Then let’s go home and experiment. For science, of course.”

“Watson.”

“I know.”

I let the memory fade, pretending that the smile on my face was a result of the arrival of the trifle.

 _The_ trifle.

A shared trifle.

After thanks were expressed and two delicate long-handled spoons accepted, Holmes and I were left looking at each other over the bowl.  

“Well, it’s this something,” I said. “I suppose there’ll be a pair of plates or small bowls in the offing.”

“But until then…”

We each took a spoonful.

“Dear me, it’s good,” I said.

“Yes, almost too good.”

We each took another spoonful.

“The fruit is fresh, not preserved.”

“Almonds. Nice cream.” I dug a bit deeper. “Nice custard, too.”

We continued eating.

“Macaroons. Ratafias.”

“And the sherry…”

“…isn’t sherry. It’s port. Good port.”

“Watson, a pâtissier made this.”

“Yes, the smoked haddock pie was fine, but definitely not of this caliber!”

“My thought precisely. I wonder…”

We had consumed most of it by the time a worried-looking waiter appeared with two small bowls and a serving spoon.

Holmes pointed to me and said, “By the way, this man is a medical doctor if you have need of one. He’d be more than willing to attend to anyone in the kitchen who might require his services.”

A look of relief washed over the young man’s face. He turned to me and exclaimed, “Oh, sir, yes, if you will, please, the cook’s gone faint!”

I rose, bidding silent adieu to the delectable trifle and hoping the walk to the kitchen was a sobering one.


	16. The Vein of Morphine.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grPjVXnkrWU&index=16&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI). I think it goes better with the next chapter (and No. 17 with this one) but I was keen to do the morphine first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back Caprice fans! I'm back in the ol' violin saddle and we'll be arpeggio-o-ong 'til the end. I'll need a chapter or two to get my groove back, so I appreciate any patience you can spare :)

“Shall he live?” asked Holmes when I returned.

“He shall, with a bit of care, but Holmes!” I cried, frowning at the dish on the table.

More than half of our shared dessert had disappeared.

“Your absence was prolonged, Watson.”

I check my pocket watch. “It was not!” I protested hotly.

“Much longer than required to administer a sniffer of brandy.”

“I did more than that, Holmes.”

He smirked.

“But,” I continued. “I suppose this is lovely confection is not something to be trifled with…”

Holmes rolled his eyes and huffed.

I grinned and picked up my spoon and proceeded to claim less than my share.

“Paganini’s childhood bout of measles was the first serious illness in a lifetime of them, and he, like your patient in the kitchen, was prescribed more than a sniffer of brandy for his ailments. He was known to take matters into his own hands as well as consult a variety of specialists.”

Despite the sweetness of my palate, I grimaced.

_To take matters into his own hands._

I loved Holmes’s hands until I hated them.

I loved Holmes’s hands until one of them was wrapped ‘round a bottle plucked from the corner of the mantelpiece. Until one was opening a neat morocco case. Until the long, white, nervous ﬁngers of one adjusted the delicate needle hypodermic syringe. Until another rolled back his left shirt-cuff. Until they thrust the sharp point home, until they pressed down the tiny piston, until they dropped to his side as his lips expelled a long sigh of satisfaction.

_Which is it to-day, morphine or cocaine?_

_God, please, let it be the morphine._

There was only one time in our long association when I truly thought it might have been morphine. When I had come across Holmes at the Bar of Gold opium den, surprise had outstripped horror.

Certainly, he had not added opium-smoking among his weaknesses!

No, as it turned out, he was there, in disguise, for a case.

The revelation was most reassuring.

Holmes was still the Holmes I knew. He did not drink laudanum. He did not smoke opium. He did not inject morphine into himself.

Once, after a murderous attack, Doctor Leslie Oakshott had injected him with it. The other few instances, it had been my hand on the syringe. The doses were always small and therapeutic and in every case, they had achieved the desired, that is, my desired outcome: affording Holmes a modicum of uninterrupted rest, rest which pain, of body, of mind, would not allow him.

Morphine or cocaine?

_God, please, let it be morphine. Then he will sleep, and peace, brief, but sure, will be upon us both._

Holmes and I ate in silence, his next words demonstrating that he had followed my trail of unspoken thoughts as if they had been telegraphed or writ large.

“The dreams of Morpheus journey from gates of ivory, Watson. They are as sweet and fragrant as this dish between us, but they are false.”

I had no wish to get into an argument with him. “Was Paganini a habitual user of morphine?” I asked.

“Not to my knowledge. I find it difficult to believe that he could have managed,” he drew an invisible bow ‘cross an invisible violin and made a frantic sawing motion, “any of the caprices were he a longtime resident of Xanadu.”

“Another trait in common,” I observed as the last spoonfuls of the dessert were divided between us.

“He had his preferences,” said Holmes.

“Naturally,” I retorted dryly, succeeding in keeping the ‘so do you’ an unvoiced addendum to my reply.


	17. The Temper of Cocaine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussion of drug use.
> 
> Here's [Op. 1 No. 17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXE7XJv90k4&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=17). 
> 
> [Niccolò Paganini's bloodletting kit](https://www.schubertiademusic.com/items/details/11124-paganini-nicol%C3%B2-the-personal-bloodletting-set-of-paganini) is for sale.

“Paganini’s health was poor, but one wonders if the therapies were not harsher than the underlying ailments,” said Holmes.

“It is quite easy to look at an earlier time with today’s knowledge and tut-tut,” I remarked.

The trifle was gone. All that remained on the table was a bottle of claret one-third full and a pair of glasses, and Holmes’s expression—or my own reflected upon him—told me that the vessel would be drained.

“Paganini was quite concerned with ridding his body of perceived impurities. He was fond of blood-letting. He had his own personal kit, which he carried with him on tour. He also took, according to some reports in great excess, a purgative of vegetable origin; it was prescribed to him by one of the many doctor whom he consulted and may have aggravated an existing intestinal disorder. Then, of course, there was the mercury.”

Given what Holmes had said about Paganini’s youthful promiscuity, I could surmise what the condition warranted the mercury.

But here was a difference between the two violinists. Holmes did not try to rid himself of impurities. On the contrary, he welcomed them directly into his system, and one impurity in particular.

It was always the cocaine.

For a period of his life, Holmes alternated between cocaine and ambition, between drug and work, like dance partners. ‘My mind,’ he would say, ‘rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artiﬁcial stimulants.’

It was truth. And it was lie, for at the time that he uttered those words, Holmes was not dispensing with the ‘artificial stimulants,’ with it, with the cocaine, for very long. For example, a prosaic problem such as the examination of my watch would only buy a few minutes respite from the call of the drug.

And the unenterprising criminal classes were ultimately no more responsible for the dots and scars on Holmes’s sinewy forearm and wrist than my pecuniary circumstances were responsible for my penchant for wagering or than my unhappy childhood home was responsible for my brother’s decision to sleep off his final night of a lifetime of drinking between two railroad tracks.

Injecting oneself thrice daily was not the mark of a casual user of any substance any more than attending three separate betting establishment in a day for the same period of weeks would be considered ‘the occasional flutter.’

Holmes was a self-poisoner, and though he recognized cocaine as poison, he still elected to use it and often during that period. He would acknowledge my concerns when voiced, and then argue, ‘I ﬁnd it, however, so transcendently stimulating and clarifying to the mind that its secondary action is a matter of small moment.’ That ‘secondary action’ was, naturally, temporary weakness and risk of permanent damage to his health and wellbeing.

Holmes had used those words, ‘transcendently stimulating,’ aloud to me once, but even at the time I knew that he must have said it to himself a thousand-fold until the notion was as solid as any scientific principle or law to him. And that was the hallmark self-deceit that served as handmaiden of such vice.

Nevertheless, I protested. I knew the example of my brother, plus assorted patients over the years, such as Isa Whitney, who had paid dearly for their indulgences, some with their very lives.

I argued. I urged. But I did not beg. And I did not judge.

I fought a long, tiresome campaign to rid myself of my gambling habit. I avoided certain routes in the city. I even parted with a handkerchief, my ‘lucky one,’ naturally. I forced my feet to move in an opposite direction, and many times, they did not listen.

‘They did not listen.’ Bah! Lie.

But unlike my gambling, the class of addiction shared by Holmes and my brother had a slightly more pernicious character for it created in the body a dependency which became vicious when mingled with the lies the mind fabricated. More and more of the drug was required to achieve the same ‘transcendently stimulating’ state, and therefore, more damage, suffered, more risk, confronted. Such cravings also required careful weaning to loosen their grips on the body, not to mention the prying of calcified logic from the mind.

The moods, what I once called the ‘black reaction’ that came upon Holmes, surfaced as the drug ebbed from his system. He was rude, foul, vitriolic at  times. I suffered alongside him some days and some days abandoned him to it.

As Holmes extended his arm to fill my glass, his cuffs shifted, and I caught a glimpse of a few old puncture-marks. My look did not escape him, and perhaps that was why he was so generous with the pouring.

“Watson, do you remember the final time that I cried ‘I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?’

I could not.

“You said quite pointedly, ‘Your definition of brainwork is severely limited, my dear man. If the present is not stimulating enough, why not look to the past? If the past won’t do, why not look inside that bloody violin? Or preserve your legacy in a manner that suits you, without the tinge of romanticism which you so disparage in my accounts?’”

“I never thought you were listening, Holmes.”

“I was never heeding you, my good man, but listening, always. I remembered your words. I tucked them away in my sleeve like a soldier’s lucky handkerchief I once purchased at a steal.”

I stared, wide-eyed. “But I sold that to a—”

“You can’t have it back,” he replied petulantly. “But then you said, ‘If you cannot find anything to live for, then live for me.’”

I frowned. “I don’t remember saying that.”

“Didn’t you? Well, I heard it, nonetheless. Paganini lived for his music and then his son. I live for the work and then my Boswell.”


	18. The Peculiarity of Medieval Studies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is [Op. 1 No. 18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjosTH1RJTw&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=18)

“Any student of history can tell you that the nothing develops spontaneously and that the past repeats itself quite often. Paganini’s were not the first twenty-four caprices.”

“No?”

“No. As revolutionary and phenomenal as he was, Paganini still had precursors and artists who influenced his style and work. A violinist named Pietro Locatelli composed his own twenty-four caprices, called _L'arte di nuova modulazione – Capricci enigmatici_. Published in the 1730s, they were shunned for their musical innovations and summarily forgotten.”

I hummed.

In addition to his other roles, Holmes was, in fact, a student of history, and the part of history that attracted him most was the Middle Ages. He could speak in-depth about miracle plays and period pottery. He’d done research in early English charters and written a monograph upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus. He could pour over blackletter editions for days on end. He had, at times, committed himself to deciphering medieval palimpsests, and, by his own admission, there were days when he’d see no news later than the fifteenth century.

On occasion, his interests took him further back in time, such as when he was tracing the roots of the Cornish language to its Chaldean roots, and sometimes he would project himself forward, as when he expounded upon the warships of the future.

But most often when he donned his scholar’s cap, it was to the Middle Ages that he turned his attention. And though I did not share his fascination, he always explained his findings with such enthusiasm, and simplified language, that I readily understood and appreciated them.

And by my logic, if he was absorbed in decoding a fifteenth century abbey’s accounting, then he was not absorbed or tempted by the cocaine bottle. And while study of this kind did not give his mind a total rest—as many physicians urged, but which I believed impossible, yes, impossible, not highly improbable, for a man like Holmes—it did remove the sense of urgency and immediacy that the cases always brought with them. After all, the abbey’s inventory had waited three hundred years, it would certainly wait for tea and pipe and a few hours for Holmes to rest his eyes.

And, thus, I always welcomed Holmes’ studies whether they took place, say, in our Baker Street rooms on a stormy November night or whilst the two of us were in exile—forced or voluntary—in a university town or the Cornish peninsula.

But…

“Trouble seems to find us no matter where we go, or how far back into history I delve,” said Holmes, with a smile. “There is always a disturbed person, vicar, lecturer, whomever,” he waved a hand,“ with a pretty problem to place before me.”

“Your reputation precedes you. And it’s known that you have a kind heart that can be swayed with a bit of puzzle.”

“And whose fault is that?” he teased. Then he sipped and shrugged. “When I was studying in university, I was so keen on natural philosophy and its applications that I eschewed other subjects which were of interest but lacked the,” he frowned, “glamour of the sciences. Now that my appetite for science in its purest form as well as its employment in crime-solving is regularly whetted, I can devote some of my leisure to old loves, old beds long lain fallow.”

“Of course, the other adage related to history is that one must learn from it,” he continued, leaning forward, his voice dropping to a whisper. “By the end of my first case, I had lost my best friend. That shall not happen again.”

I smiled.


	19. The Thought of Scientific Experimentation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 19](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgYCpqyQuWc&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=19)

Holmes’s forays into the medieval period were much less demanding on a cohabitant and a landlady than some of his other hobbies.

“One might call Paganini a scientist, but his chemicals were the notes he produced with his instrument. He mixed, he blended, he tried and, perhaps, erred as I do,” said Holmes with a wry smirk. “And then he had his brilliant successes which made him renown.”

By way of reply, I brought my glass to my face and sniffed.

Success, yes, the Holmes test for blood alone would have secured my companion a footnote in the annals of crime-solving history, but oh, the errors!

And the smells of those errors!

Holmes had declared within moments of our meeting that he had chemicals about and occasionally engaged in experiments. I voiced no annoyance at this at the time, but then at that time, I could hardly have imagined how malodorous such investigations could be.

Holmes often threw himself into an abstruse chemical analysis, allotting part of his brain to the heating of retorts and distilling of vapours whilst the other part of his brain worked on a case. Up to the small hours of the morning, I could hear the clicking of test tubes and breathe in noxious fumes wafting up from the acid-charred bench that served as his domestic laboratory.

But as much as I grumbled about the olfactory assault, I greatly respected Holmes for his enterprise. And as far as I knew, all his investigations—like the multitude of technical monographs he penned, on topics from ears to hands, from dogs to typewriters, from tobacco ash to the tracing of footprints—were, ultimately, in the service of his detective work.

I knew from the first, too, that expediency always trumped caution in Holmes’s methods. When he reached out to shake my hand in that laboratory in Barts hospital, his fingers were covered with plasters. Indeed, I’d just witnessed him use his own blood to demonstrate the re-agent that was precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else.

Then, he’d bowed before me and Stamford as to an applauding crowd conjured by his imagination. Little did I know that I would become that crowd, and then, as with some conjurers’ acts, be invited upon stage as participant.

The most memorable experiment, apart from the first one where I served as mere spectator, was the one that Holmes conducted in relation to the Cornish horror and in which I suffered alongside him. When Holmes burnt the powder in the lamp, I was struck by monstrous hallucinations and dread. I saw my way through the madness and succeeded in throwing my arms around Holmes and drawing us out the door and into the palliative fresh air as one.

Holmes and I realised, perhaps not for the first time, but at least never so vividly or purely, that I would follow him anywhere he chose to go, and the notion brought us both pause.

And there, upon the grassy plot with the glorious sunshine on our faces, we knew ours to be a lifelong partnership of indelible character.

And, thus, I remembered a moment, which might seem to many a denouement better left forgotten, with great tenderness.

And I think Holmes did as well, for when he refilled his glass, he repeated the words he’d uttered then after implying that it was far more sensible for me to have nothing to do with the Devil’s Foot experiment.

“I know my Watson.”

My reply was also an echo of the past.

“You know that it is my greatest joy and privilege to help you.”


	20. The Conceit of Index-Books

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOU42l_7tDs&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=20).

“What has Paganini left us?” asked Holmes, addressing myself and the bottle of claret. “His compositions. Rossini is reported to have said that ‘Truly, it is fortunate that Paganini did not devote himself exclusively to lyrical composition; he would have become a dangerous rival.’ A few of Paganini’s works are lost, but sufficient remain to form a substantial legacy."

"We also have colourful stories about his life and performances, such as his concert in Leghorn in 1808. There he had run a nail into his shoe and arrived on stage limping. The audience thought it risible. Their mirth bubbled into unrestrained laughter when the candles fell from his music stand, and that laughter became uproarious when one string of his violin snapped. Paganini was a sensitive but proud man, and he carried on, performing on only three strings, and by the end, the audience was no longer laughing, but listening with rapt fervour. Yes, we have many stories, such as the time he used a Malacca walking cane as a bow and played an entire concerto, composed by Valdabrini because he, Valdabrini, a conductor of a theatre orchestra, had taunted Paganini that he could only play works of his own creation. There are many stories, but all Paganini’s knowledge of music was inside him. His attic, as it were, was sufficient for his art and his work.”

This last statement was spoken with a trace of envy.

Holmes considered his brain to be like an attic which he filled with nothing but a large assortment of tools that helped him in doing his work, tools arranged in a perfect order that he might find what he needed quickly and without difficulty. He cautioned that the walls of his attic were not elastic and would not distend to any extent, and therefore made a practice of forgetting some things to make space for new additions. Therefore, items like the Copernican Theory and the composition of the Solar System would never take priority of place over, say, the symptoms of belladonna poisoning.

But knowledge is a vast sea, and I discovered that in practise, Holmes did not forget useful facts when his attic grew too crowded. He stored them somewhere much more concrete than his mind, and if anyone were ever to ask what I believed to be the appearance of Holmes’s brain-attic, I would have a ready answer.

The index-books.

How many times had I been asked to look up something in one of his books?

Irene Adler. Cases resembling that of Mary Sutherland’s. Colonel Sebastian Moran. The Baskerville Case. Vampires.

“Your index books are invaluable to your work, Holmes, but do they not also provide at least a modicum of joy? You seem to relish the indexing and cross-indexing process.”

He gave a nod of concession. “The books do afford some distraction on days when the elements, rain, wind, fog, are most unkind and the criminal classes most uninspiring in their enterprises.”

Holmes twirled the stem of his glass between forefinger and thumb, and his next words were the only proof I had that the quantity of claret we’d imbibed thus far was having any effect on him at all.

“Do you remember the case brought to us by Mrs. Warren?” he asked with the tiniest slash of a cheeky smile. “The one about her lodger who never left his rooms?”

“Of course. You were quite cross with her for disturbing you. You said you really had other things to engage you. Those other things, if I recall, were arranging and indexing some material in one of your great scrapbooks.

“Yes, I laid down my gum-brush and attended to her, did I not?”

“Yes, a quite interesting case. The Red Circle.”

“But do you remember what was the nature of the recent material I was archiving, and thus, the reason for my pique at the interruption?”

I frowned and cast my memory back. Scissors. Paper. Gum-brush. Sketches, perhaps? But really Holmes kept his papers in such a state of untidiness that it would be like trying to remember one snowflake in a blizzard.

I shook my head.

He twisted his lips impishly, then donned a mask of solemnity. “So many times, you’ve taken down one of my many volumes and opened it, or handed it to me to open, but always upon my request. You’ve never once sought them out of your own volition.”

It was a statement, not a question, and a true one.

“No,” I said simply. “It’s never occurred.”

Holmes smiled. “If you were to ever take down the first volume of ‘W,’ you would find, on its final page one curious listing. **_Watson, John H., M.D._** _see annex_.”

“I’m in your index-book!” I cried with an exuberance that was no doubt amplified by the claret in my veins. Then I chuckled. “I don’t know why I’m so flattered, given the full range of characters found there, but nevertheless—”

“You are not in my index-book, Watson.”

My heart sank. Then I protested, “But you said—”

“You are the subject of an entire index-book of your own. The brown-red one that I was working on that day.”

“Brown-red?” My mind conjured a three-inch thick tome with battered cover. “But isn’t that about poisonous plants?”

He shook his head. “I moved the plants to the blue one many years ago, and on the day that Mrs. Warren so rudely barged into our domain, I was setting myself to the serious task of deciding which member of the _Apidae_ family my dear Watson most closely resembled now that he was shunning his former moustache wax in favour of Beake’s new formula. I had narrowed it down to three when the landlady thrust her tale of nervous woe before us.”

With every word, my smile widened. “You are mad, Holmes!”

He nodded. “Quite.” Then he shot me a positively coquettish look. “It is of the highest importance not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones, my dear Watson.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Rossini quote is appeared in _Nicolo Paganini: His Life and Work_ (1907) but is originally from _Notice sur le Célèbre Violiniste Nicolo Paganini_ by G. Imbert de Laphalèque (1830).


	21. The Vagary of Untidiness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here is [Op. 1 No. 21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIyCwSYTPFg&index=21&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI).
> 
> The 'cat-like cleanliness' is a canon reference, but in this case, it is also a reference to the circumstance (and title of) of [this wonderful fanart](http://come-at-once.livejournal.com/170728.html) (NSFW; Rating: Mature) by Vernets created for Round 7 of the Come at Once prompt-a-thon. 
> 
> And finally the anecdote is from _Nicolo Paganini: a Biography_ by J. G. Prod'homme (1911).

“I shall verify your claim, Holmes, as soon as I’m able,” I declared.

He shrugged. “As you wish.”

I sipped my claret and said, “I am very grateful for your index-book, regardless of theme, because if your papers, newspaper clippings, notes, etcetera are pasted and organised in their pages, then those same papers cannot be scattered about our rooms, accumulating month after month until they form an alpine range of obstruction to daily life!”

Holmes nodded and made a rueful clicking noise. “My papers are your great crux, are they not, Watson? I think that you truly do not mind and are, in fact, sometimes amused when criminal relics wander into unlikely positions and turn up in unexpected—”

“—and undesirable—” I interjected.

“—places. And you are a former soldier, accustomed to rough-and-tumble work, as well as a one of a natural Bohemianism of disposition. What care you if—?”

“Cigars in the coal-scuttle. Tobacco in the toe of a Persian slipper. Unanswered correspondence jack-knifed to the wooden mantlepiece. A wall with V.R. done in bullet-pocks,” I said, rattling off the more eccentric of arrangements.

“Indeed,” said Holmes.

“I don’t. I object to the papers, Holmes. If it were not for the occasional house fire—”

He shuddered violently.

“—there would hardly be any thinning at all! But nature has a way of providing, I suppose; _your_ nature, Holmes, as you’re the one that is usually responsible for the fires, too, in addition to the mountains of ready kindling. And what’s more,” I felt flush with claret and righteous domestic indignation, “any attempt to persuade you to make our rooms a bit more habitable results in the most outrageous dodging, ducking, circumvention and, frankly, shameless manipulation on your part.”

He stared at me with tightly pressed lips and a mischievous twinkle in his eye that said he might, just might, have been stifling a grin and a naughty reply.

He drank deep from his glass then said haughtily,

“Perhaps it is the burden of genius, Watson. According to Paganini’s secretary, the violinist’s rooms were also always in a state of chaos, but his habit bore one critical difference as compared to mine. Paganini’s disorder was not just comprised of sheet music or musical accoutrement, but also clothes and boots. It is said that so dire was the untidiness of his suites that it was often time-consuming for him to find the appropriate raiment for him and his son to be seen in public. On this point, we diverge. Papers, yes, I am guilty as charged. Other articles, too, perhaps, but my wardrobe, most emphatically, no.”

I considered this distinction, then gave a nod. “You do have a certain quiet primness of dress as well as a catlike cleanliness, which you manage to maintain regardless of circumstance—even when you are, for example, dwelling in a Neolithic hut on a moor!”

“Thank you. I know that you appreciate my ‘catlike cleanliness,’ as you call it. Why, ever the proper gentleman, you even abet it when occasion warrants.”

Even Holmes dare not look me in the eye as he said this. Far too bold a reference.

He was drunk! And flirting! Recklessly! In public!

“And you quite like my shameless manipulation!” he added hotly, which confirmed my suspicions.

“Holmes!” I breathed, my tone dripping with admonishment and caution.

“Did you or did you not enjoy my recounting of the adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, Watson?” he said coolly when he finally met my gaze.

We conversed silently, then I admitted defeat.

“Of course, I did,” I said with such dignity as the claret permitted.


	22. The Mood of Philosophy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsVRtszht4w&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=22)

“All right, Watson, let’s move on to something a bit more somber,” said Holmes, for apparently, once I’d surrendered the argument, he was more than willing to be magnanimous and acquiesce to my unvoiced request for prudence. “Paganini never enjoyed sound health, but he misjudged how very ill he was at a moment that would prove crucial. In 1840, he refused a priest who had been sent by the Bishop of Nice, deeming himself not ready for final rites and therefore died without preparing himself according to the requirements of the Church of Rome. This, combined with persistent rumours of his diabolical collusion, resulted in the Church refusing to allow his body to be buried in consecrated ground. Thus, the controversy, restlessness, and ill fortune that plagued him in life followed him to the grave and continued to torment those who cared for him most.”

“His son and his friends fought the Church’s decision, meanwhile Paganini’s embalmed body was moved four times in Genoa until it came to rest for four years on the property of his son. It was finally interred in a cemetery in Parma, without any display or outward symbol of homage, only to be exhumed fifty years later for a viewing and a new interment in another cemetery in the same locale. And there he lies, now, in a tomb.”

"With proper adornment?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I hummed and peered at the bottle of claret, which held only, by my admittedly encumbered faculties, about four small glasses-worth of spirit.

“No tomb,” I said finally, not lifting my gaze. “I would like a grassy hill with sun and a hearty bed of perennials to keep me company. Will you see it, my dear man? The plainest of stone.”

A long silence followed.

I looked up just in time to Holmes’s stricken expression replaced by a cool mask.

“Naturally,” he whispered.

And just like that, despite the rivulets of liquor flowing through our veins, we were both exceptionally sober.

“Apologies, Holmes, if my words disturbed you. I spoke hastily, without consideration or forethought. It is just that I am older and more battered and have no living family and if we are to retire together, it would most likely fall to you to—”

“Yes, of course. It is quite logical.” Holmes put his glass to his lips and tilted it, but could not have drank, for the vessel was quite empty. He set the glass down, seeming not to have noticed if he had drunk or not. “And you have every assurance that your wishes will be fulfilled, in spirit and letter.”

I took it for the vow that it was.

Then Holmes added in a soft voice,

“The highest assurance of the goodness of Providence rests in the flowers; their smell and colour are embellishments, not conditions of life. We have much to hope for from the flowers. And so I shall make certain that the flowers that adorn your resting place do all that flowers do: assure of goodness and embellish and inspire hope, my dear Watson.”

“Thank you,” I said, blinking back tears. I attempted to drain my glass but succeeded only in sending an unholy swallow of burning liquid down my airway. I coughed and sputtered and, when I was once again in command of my own voice, said

“I suppose in your case Mycroft—”

Holmes spoke matter-of-factly. “If we are speaking of the most likely scenarios, and a few most unlikely ones, I daresay that Mycroft will proceed me into the grave. If he does and you do not, then I should like to be made into ash, a tremendous amount of ash, the one-hundred-forty-first variety of my collection, as it were, and that ash to be spread by you in all the corners of this world you see fit to scatter it. You shall be allotted funds necessary to make a worldwide tour, should you choose.”

In spite of myself, I grinned. “A last adventure?” I nodded. “I quite like the idea, but listen, Holmes, let’s not finish this lovely bottle on so mournful a note.”

He gave a nod. “What do you propose we discuss?”

I searched my thoughts, then lit upon something. “How about an enemy that you and Paganini share?”

“Watson, you astound me! Here I have been regaling you with story after story, thinking myself to be the more knowledgeable one, but at the,” he eyed the bottle, “tenth hour, you reveal a tidbit unknown to me! Do tell! Did Paganini have a rival like the Napoleon of Crime?”

“Not a Moriarty,” I said. “But I suppose he suffered as much as you do at hands in which an adroit pen is mightier than a sword.”

Holmes laughed and filled both our glasses.

“Oh, yes, the notorious illustrator!”


	23. The Vision of the Deerstalker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CivvhZ0FN4c&index=23&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI).

“That man!” muttered Holmes indignantly.

“Paganini suffered at the hands of the so-called artistic press as well. Newspapers were filled with unflattering caricatures of him, and such drawings did everything to fan the flames of rumors of his demonic nature. But he was an artist and therefore his image was under more scrutiny than most.”

“He wore dark suits, kept his dark hair long and flowing, held a,” Holmes shrugged, “peculiar, somewhat awkward stance when he performed. He was tall and lean and, as his health deteriorated, became even leaner, giving the impression of a fragile assemble of bones on stage. The skeleton image bore a delicacy which contrasted starkly with the fury with which he played his instrument.”

“Yes, without a doubt, Paganini’s image fed the dark speculation about him. But,” Holmes drank deep and plunked his empty glass onto the table with a soft thud, “I daresay he never suffered the indignity of being portrayed by a man who has no understanding of the subtle differences between an ulster, an inverness, and a macfarlane!”

“Holmes, you _do_ wear an inverness.”

“Not as often as the world seems to think! And, pray tell, my dear Watson, where is my inverness now?”

I frowned. “At home? I don’t know.”

“It is being carefully and thoroughly laundered. And not at my own expense, I might add. And do you know why?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. I’m your Boswell, not your keeper, or your valet. I don’t keep an eye on your wardrobe.”

“Perhaps you should. Mrs. Hudson pinched my inverness and wore it to the Greater London Landladies Fancy Dress Ball.”

“By Jove, did she! Why?”

Holmes huffed. “I believe she purchased a cheap facsimile of a certain gentleman’s outdoor sporting head-ware,” he winced and turned a bit pale, “and borrowed a terrier, which she dipped in phosphorescent paint!”

I began to giggle.

“Watson!”

“I’m sorry, old man. Dreadful. Truly dreadful. Do you happen to know if she won?”

He scowled, then muttered. “She took second. After Mrs. Turner’s Cleopatra.”

I hid my ungentlemanly snort in my glass.

“I suppose some of the paint got on the coat,” I mused. “That’s why it had to be washed.”

“Nonsense. It reeked of gin. I couldn’t have worn it on any professional errand without the false notion of my own penchant for drink becoming common household knowledge and a source of unending jest for our friends at Scotland Yard. And the deerstalker, Watson!”

The last was a pitiful wail.

“As if I, Sherlock Holmes, would wear such a—!”

“But you did wear an ear-flapped traveling cap when we went to investigate the disappearance of Silver Blaze!”

“Yes, a _traveling_ cap. That is for outdoor wear. And even more precisely, country wear. I, a gentleman of upstanding aspect—”

“Upstanding until there’s a need for house-breaking, m’lord,” I remarked, much under my breath.

“—would never have worn such a thing to set a trap for Colonel Moran in the heart of London, but a few steps from my own abode. I certainly don’t appreciate the quaint sketch of Moran throttling me, whilst the cap, which must have been very tight, indeed, to remain _in situ_ despite the attempted throttling. And that’s just one of the flaws of sense in the illustrations. A man’s thumb could not be chopped like that, and I told him so!”

He fell back in his chair.

“The deerstalker! The inverness! Oh, why doesn’t my logic, my reason, my methods follow me as these trifles do, Watson?”

“They do, Holmes. When people see a deerstalker and an inverness, they think ‘Sherlock Holmes.’ And when they think ‘Sherlock Holmes,’ they think of the greatest detective that the world has ever known. It doesn’t matter if your in a dressing gown or a frock coat or even smoking a calabash pipe—”

“A calabash pipe!” he cried with a shudder. “I would never smoke a calabash! Oh, Watson, say it won’t come to that!”

“Whatever it comes to, Holmes, it doesn’t matter. I have shown them your brain, your heart, your bravery, your nobility, in the truest sense of the word. There's your legacy. Props and wardrobe, bah.” I waved my hand dismissively.

“Thank you, Watson, for all that you have done,” he said, finally calmed. “But, you know, in your chronicles of me, you show yourself, too. Your loyalty, your courage, your strength. A fraction of the real amount, but it is there, even to the less-discerning reader and I am anything but undiscerning when it comes to you.” His smile faded. “But I suppose that man did do one good deed.”

I smirked. “I have been wondering when you would arrive at that concession.”

Holmes shrugged, then leaned forward and breathed, “He was right. You do look ever so dashing with the moustache.”


	24. The Caper of the Game Afoot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here's [Op. 1 No. 24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uALsg4aWKB0&list=PLdkjwZMK_CIqA7ZUWb7KOLEKrwahwRtVI&index=24)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who's taken this journey with me!

“Will there be anything more, sirs?” asked the waiter as Holmes divided what little remained of the claret between our two glasses.

“One last, small indulgence,” replied Holmes. “Do not drain your glass yet, my dear man,” he cautioned, then stood. He walked beside the waiter for half the length of the restaurant, head bent in conversation. Then Holmes’s hand sank into his coat pocket and, with a gesture I had witnessed many times over the years, he clasped the waiter’s hand in his. He thanked the waiter heartily, then made his way back to the table.

How much money Holmes had passed the lad and for what purpose, but I did not know, but I would bet the rest of my natural life that my companion would be charging me to pay for whatever means of transportation, were it other than our own feet, was to ferry us to our next destination. What monies he had had on him were now in the hands of our server.

“What was that all about Holmes?”

“Settling our bill.”

“I settled our bill.”

“For food.”

“And drink.”

Holmes hummed. “I wanted the bottle. What might have been nothing more than one pleasant meal among many turned out, quite unexpectedly, to be something a bit more special. I wish to remember it. Perhaps, once cleaned, the bottle might make a handsome, if Bohemian, candlestick holder.”

“And just where will you keep this Bohemian relic?” I asked, with a smile.

“Oh, well, it would be inappropriate for public display. Narrow-minded but well-paying clients might disapprove. Therefore, I think someplace private,” he mused.

“You are sentimental, my dear man.”

“At times,” he admitted.

“Now may I finish my claret?” I asked.

“No,” he insisted.

“Why not?” I huffed impatiently. “Holmes, I don’t mean to spoil the mood, but,” I turned to glance at the world outside the nearest window, “the afternoon is far advanced, and the hot glare has softened into a mellow glow. Don’t you think we had best be on our way to the police-station? Lestrade might be waiting for us with your answer.”

“I daresay you’re right, but no, we shan’t leave quite yet. Do you know there was a John Watson in Paganini’s life?”

“No, I didn’t,” I said curtly.

“Paganini fell in love with Watson’s daughter, Charlotte. The lovers were to meet at Boulogne-sur-Mer, but Watson joined them, bringing the French police and representatives of the British Consulate along. He claimed that Paganini had abducted Charlotte. It was later thought to be entirely a publicity stunt cooked up by the father to extort money from Paganini. Charlotte Watson was older than many of the stories claimed and not, in fact, taken against her will. Ah, here we go.”

I followed Holmes’s gaze, looking over my shoulder.

A young lad carrying a violin case, Holmes’s violin case, I notice as he neared, had just entered the restaurant.

“Holmes?”

Holmes took the case from the lad and set it on the table. Then he made a gesture for me to compensate the youth for his effort. As I did so, Holmes opened the case and took out bow and instrument.

“The twenty-fourth Caprice by Nicolo Paganini,” he announced.

Then he played.

And, as always, his audience was rapt.

I was lost in the music from the first few bars, and whatever embarrassment I might have felt at the spectacle that Holmes created in that dining room never even crossed my mind, much less entered my heart.

The melody with its changing sounds and moods was like a year of weather upon the ocean, storms and sun and everything in-between, all in the span of a few minutes.

It also seemed the perfect tribute of one artist to another. Though separated by time and place, Holmes and Paganini shared a love of music and of violin.

The dining hall had thinned considerably, but we were hardly alone. Everyone stopped chatting, stopped working, stopped even walking by the open door, to listen—even the young lad who’d brought the case to Holmes.

As I listened, I thought of the many facets of the man I knew as Sherlock Holmes, of his personality, his habits and how, like the notes that poured forth from that assembly of polished wood and rosined string, they were woven together in a composition that was, without a doubt, a work of art, a work of life extraordinary.

Holmes sawed away, notes scampering up and down flights of tiny stairs until at last, there was only one a long vibrating sound.

He finished and bowed.

And as everyone clapped enthusiastically, Holmes reached for his glass and raised it to me.

I raised my own glass and said, “To capricious men, long may they live and play!”

He and I downed our drinks as the applause died.

Holmes returned his violin to its case and the case to the boy, who promptly disappeared.

“Now, you may argue, Watson, that Paganini would have done better justice to that composition—”

“No, Holmes,” I began to protest.

He silenced me with a raised hand. “—but I would argue, ‘Could Paganini have played his twenty-fourth caprice, his belly soaked with half a bottle of claret, and then, within an hour, have solved a puzzle regarding the origins of a cardboard box of two ears preserved in coarse salt?”

I grinned and shook my head and said firmly, “He could not.”

“He could not,” Holmes echoed. “There is play, and then there is the hunt. And the game, a glorious game, my dear man, is afoot!”

And with that, Holmes charged out of the restaurant and I followed in his wake, humming.


	25. Blitz Poem: Fancy a Caper?

Whim of violins

Whim of fancy

Fancy of wine

Fancy of urge

Urge of exhaustion

Urge of notion

Notion of chivalry

Notion of bee

Bee of bees

Bee of freak

Freak of diabolical collusion

Freak of perversity

Perversity of evil

Perversity of humours

Humours of tobacco

Humours of quirk

Quirk of dressing gowns

Quirk of rib

Rib of fowl

Rib of impulse

Impulse of feigned death

Impulse of fitfulness

Fitfulness of perfectionism & self-reproach

Fitfulness of kink

Kink of Turkish bath

Kink of sport

Sport of boxing

Sport of desire

Desire of hands & feet

Desire of vein

Vein of morphine

Vein of temper

Temper of cocaine

Temper of peculiarity

Peculiarity of medieval studies

Perculiarity of thought

Thought of scientific experimentation

Thought of conceit

Conceit of index-books

Conceit of vagary

Vagary of untidiness

Vagary of mood

Mood of philosophy

Mood of vision

Vision of deerstalker

Vision of caper

Caper of game afoot

Caper awaits

awaits…

afoot!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Blitz Poem, a poetry form created by Robert Keim. It begins with one short phrase, it can be a cliché. Begin the next line with another phrase that begins with the same first word as line 1. The first 48 lines should be short, but at least two words. The third and fourth lines are phrases that begin with the last word of the 2nd phrase, the 5th and 6th lines begin with the last word of the 4th line, and so on, continuing, with each subsequent pair beginning with the last word of the line above them, which establishes a pattern of repetition. The pattern continues for 48 total lines with this pattern, And then the last two lines repeat the last word of line 48, then the last word of line 47. The title must be only three words, with some sort of preposition or conjunction joining the first word from the third line to the first word from the 47th line, in that order.
> 
> There should be no punctuation. When reading a BLITZ, it is read very quickly, pausing only to breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
